Beer in Brussels: Drinking unblended lambic in the Cantillon Tasting Room

Saturday, August 30, 2014
As I wrote my previous post - which seemed to suck up words like a storm-drain as I scrambled to capture the true magic of Cantillon brewery - it quickly became apparent that to start mentioning the actual sampling of the beers would have forced an exercise in endurance from any reader.

So here it is as a separate post, my experience of the charming Cantillon sampling room and the taste of that jug-poured, unblended lambic, amongst others.

Part bar, part final stop of the tour (a paltry 7 euros allows you to explore the brewery and then sample two beers afterwards), the Cantillon tasting room is as humble and unfussy as you’d hope.

Oversized beer barrels form the makeshift tables, around which wobbly wooden chairs support the scattered beer travellers amongst vintage Cantillon mirrors and logos that no longer see the light of day. The place was pleasingly quiet on our visit, with plenty of room to grab a seat and take our time over these complex, oft-misunderstood beers.

The first beer we tried was in many ways the most special, thanks to its sheer simplicity - unblended, unbottled lambic taken straight from the barrel, via a stone jug, to our glasses. It had all the bracing sourness, lemon peel and tart green apple that I love about Cantillon but there was also a soft fruitiness, even a distant background sweetness which had been coaxed out by the still serve.

Next up was Iris, a very different beer to the others produced by Cantillon in that it contains solely pale malt and no wheat, giving it a slightly darker colour and fuller body - unlike the rest of Cantillon's beers which are brewed using 35% wheat malt and 65% malted barley. This, combined with the unusual method of fresh hopping the beer two weeks before bottling (most Cantillon beers use aged hops, to impart preservative tannins but not fresh hop character), gives Iris a beautiful roundness of flavour, where lightly spicy, citrus hops dovetail with a lemon pith sourness to create a truly wonderful beer. A new beer to me, this is a Cantillon I’ll seek out again in the future.

Next up was the Kriek. Matured on fresh fruit, it’s a cherry-bomb of cough sweets and tartness that has a drying, fruit-stone character in the finish and a puckering sourness that awakens the senses and purses the lips. An invigorating fruit beer that is a million miles away from the over-sweetened offerings often pushed into this category.

The Rose de Gambrinus is produced in exactly the same way as the Kriek, but using fresh raspberries in the place of sour cherries, lending the finished beer an even tarter flavour yet more floral, fresh aroma, in the place of the Kriek’s deeper fruitiness.

The final beer I drank was an old favourite of mine, Cuvee Saint-Gilloise. In brief, it’s a dry-hopped Gueuze, but it’s a beer which I could write pages of tasting notes on if given the chance. A beautiful, floral, fresh citrus aroma, even a touch of orange blossom amongst the sourness, followed by a flavour that is all at once bitter, sour, tart, and infinitely complex.

If you read my previous post and thought that the Cantillon brewery sounds interesting - a welcome break from the stainless steel and computer dials of a modern brewery - then you should really try the beers.

Out-of-the-ordinary just doesn’t cover it.

 

Beer in Brussels: Visiting Cantillon Brewery

Thursday, August 28, 2014
Of all the beery pilgrimages on my bucket-list – drinking fresh tankovna Pilsner Urquell in the Czech Republic, making my way through a tasting tray from Mikkeller in Copenhagen, glugging steins of Marzen at Oktoberfest in Munich, or being braced by brewery-fresh Stone IPA in San Diego – visiting Cantillon brewery in Brussels was right at the top.


For a start the place really has no right to exist at all. Years of decline and changing drinking habits meant that Lambic all but died out, with only a handful of breweries in Brussels keeping the tradition alive and producing tart, spontaneously fermented lambic beers for a small, niche local audience. At the same time, a worrying trend for overly sweetened ‘psuedo-lambics’ began in the 1970s and continues to this day - often heavily dosed with fruit syrups, they carry the name but not methods or true flavours of Lambic.

Eventually, Cantillon were the only ones left brewing Lambic in Brussels, but were rewarded for their perseverance through the dark years of Lambic once America got a taste for it in the late 90s and sour beers became popular amongst discerning beer drinkers. Now they are the most famous and revered lambic brewery in the World.

It’s important to understand the distinction between ‘sour beers’, which can include beers dosed with brett or any number of ‘wild yeasts’, and true spontaneously fermented lambics like those produced at Cantillon. The beers brewed in the Cantillon brewery are fermented solely by the wild yeasts in the air, which is let in through wooden slats in the roof of the brewery and allowed to come in to contact with the freshly brewed wort, which is pumped into the large, square, open topped cooling vessel located in the ramshackled loft.

At one time, this was how all beer was produced and it was only with the discoveries made by microbiologist Louie Pasteur into the fermentation process, specifically the isolation of individual yeasts, which led to the more controlled methods now widely used in modern brewing.

Cantillon has changed very little over the last hundred years and still uses the traditional methods and 17th century brewkit which they, and thousands of other international fans, believe produce the most complex sour beers in the world. This includes remaining in the same, tightly packed brewing space as they always have for fear of upsetting the delicate ecosystem of microbes and yeasts which give the beer its unique flavour.

When it is the living things in the air itself which your business relies on, you can understand why they take this so seriously. This is why you’ll never see a cobweb being swept away inside Cantillon. Because, as strange as it might sound, they are essential to the microcosm of the brewhouse and ensure that a space packed with bubbling barrels of spontaneously fermenting beer isn’t over-run with sugar-seeking fruit flies.

If there were flies around, which there aren’t, they’d have plenty to feast upon. Row after row of wooden barrels line the sprawling cellars of Cantillon. The wooden barrel heads are chalked with various letters which I decipher as referring to Gueuze, Lambic and Iris – the latter being a lambic produced with all pale malt and no wheat, leading to a slightly darker beer, which is then dry hopped for a fruitier, softer sourness.

Darkness and dankness fill the walking space between the rows and the aroma is a soft, intoxicating mix of overripe fruit and damp wood. I take in the space like a crime-scene investigator – floor, walls, surfaces and ceilings – whilst listening for the faint bubble and pop of quietly fermenting beer, breaking free of its barrel’s bung.

You feel a genuine sense of reverence as you explore the well-worn rooms of Cantillon Brewery, with every inch of the place having a piece of history attached to it. Whether it’s the thousand-stacked bottles of gueuze quietly maturing, or that magical open topped fermenting vessel tucked away in the loft, everything has a purpose and a story to tell.

And explore is exactly the right word to use. Even the modestly marked wooden doors of the entrance ensure every person who enters has a look of I found it on their face as they walk into the tasting room - before being ushered through into the brewery itself, armed with some information and a smile, then thrust into the thick of it and allowed to explore, enjoy, at their leisure.

There really is something magical in the air at Cantillon.

 

Brasserie Cantillon
56 rue Gheude,
1070 Brussels

www.cantillon.be